AI Voices in Podcasts: Future or Fad?

I was looking for the balloons , like no balloons , when you no , I turned the reaction .

But Rode came out and I know people that are really into video and they're like oh no , that's really cool . Like I'm going to get one because they're you know , they need all that stuff and I'll just be interesting because I know you can make scenes . Does that mean I could get rid of Ecamm ?

And I was like interesting , because you'd still have to stream to YouTube , right . So I was just like but I don't know . To me , I'm a big Ecamm fan , so I don't know . But I was just when it came out . It's 1200 bucks , holy cow . There's a lot of things that came out .

So we should get comfy and , you know , wet our beak by getting a fun cup of hot Java there . And , of course , that awesome coffee pour is brought to you by the one and only Mark over at podcastbrandingco , you know , cause they see you before they hear you .

So whether you need artwork or a full website or a PDF or a lead magnet or a business card or anything that is going to face the public . You got to go over to podcastbrandingco . Mark is an award-winning graphic artist and this is such a bonus . He's a podcaster , so he understands podcasting . You don't have to explain it to him .

He's done over 500 pieces of artwork for people and they're all amazing . And the one thing he's going to do that somebody else isn't is he's going to sit down with you one-on-one .

He's going to listen to your show that's another thing and then sit down with you one-on-one , find out , kind of , what you're trying to put out , what do you want your brand to be , and he's just so good at it . So when it comes time to look good and grab people's attention , there's only one place to go and that is podcastbrandingco .

And if you need another bonus Mark is Canadian , so he's polite and tell him that Dave and Jim sent you over at podcastbrandingco you over at podcastbrandingco .

Part three , and remember the Titans ? You can check it out today . This was this week , it was actually last week for this week , but you'll give it a try . If you're looking for something to listen to , you need something to catch up on or just something different . Check it out today based on at truestorypodcastcom .

And Dan thanks for your sponsorship , and he'll be on Gadget Geeks next week talking about the Elgato , not Tri-Tella prompter . There we go , thank you .

It's still plugged into the wall and I haven't lost power , it's just that thing's going bad and I don't know what's happening , but for some reason . How old is it ?

Something's happening to where , all of a sudden , one of my elgato lights will go . They'll lose its . I guess what is ?

It goes off my wi-fi , so I'll hit my button on my stream deck and , all of a sudden , one light will stay on , and one light when I was like , and all you do is you go up to the light and you flick it over and reconnects to your wifi .

But it's just such a pain in the butt when I'm like you know , oh my gosh , I have to get out of my chair to turn off the light , holy cow .

But it's kind of ridiculous it is , and last week we were playing with AI stuff and we have a great example of what AI used to be and what AI is now , and so I went over and I found a question on the bad . Well , I don't know if it's bad news , but this person I saw it and I was like , oh , that's a good question .

It's like a minute , maybe a minute and a half clip , and I even cut out some of it , but here's what old AI used to sound like . This is from a website called Revoicer that I got on an AppSumo deal and so let's do a little bit of this .

It started out very slow for months and then had a big jump and then after a few months , another jump , etc . Zencaster indicates that I had about 1052 listens , downloads last Friday and today looks like it may reach that number again . In general , I'm a retired 46-year-old and wanted to do this podcast just because I wanted to .

The feedback received has been postive , along with a troll or two along the way , which is how you know you've made it .

I don't need the money , but I do understand that monetizing podcasts is a way to confirm that what you are doing holds value . If you pursued monetization , is there a recommended way forward ? Have you ever shopped your podcast to a podcast network ? How does that work ? Do you go to them or do they come to you , etc ?

This is my first post in this group , other than responding to others' questions . Such concerns just looking for a little motivation to continue or to stop . Thank you all and I wish you all the best in your podcasting endeavors .

I want to try a podcast , so he did . I'll do 50 and see what happens . And what I thought was interesting is he's you know whatever it was over a thousand downloads in one day . That's pretty good .

He's monetized on YouTube , okay , and I love the line about when you monetize , it somehow validates your efforts , and I was like that's a different way of thinking .

But I love that was the thing that got me like I think a lot of podcasters need to validate , like why I'm doing this , is it worth it ? And they're using external things We'll talk about Chartable later . But I said , well , you need to go back and look at your why , because if you don't get your why , you burn out .

That's pretty universal and I don't know I just what would you say to this ? Because he's well , should I keep going or not ? And I'm always well . Are you having fun ? Yes , Then keep doing it . Are you having fun ? No , it's kind of a pain in the butt . Then quit doing it . Life's too short to do things that are a pain in the butt .

What are your thoughts ?

If you're starting this , I think you're thinking , hey , I want to jump in , I want to be successful , whatever that success is , it's a little soul-crushing when you go for a year and I mean your numbers are OK we talked about this a little bit last week You're they're never as good as you think they're going to be right .

You think 11 , you're going to get 9 . Or you think 11 , you're going to get 5 . It's a tough row to hoe and for most people it's just a grinded-out kind of work that is difficult at best . I'm just going to say it .

You get in the first year , you get , you know , those first couple months , you get some adrenaline and so it's new and it's kind of cool . When you hit that one-year mark , some of that , the cool factor of it being new , is kind of worn off and it's just work at that point , and it's .

I think it's really common for a lot of folks to think , you know , at this year mark , oh , do I need to keep doing this ? You know what's the value in it ?

No-transcript this if you're going to do this long-term , you got to do it because you want to do it , not for the necessarily for the feedback , right , and that's for a lot of people that is really super hard , right ? So I just think you've got to . You know , listen , your mileage might vary .

You do what you do , you , and do it the way you want to do it . I just think it gets harder after the first year and you got to really you got to kind of want to be in the space doing it , because it's very few of us are going to be wildly popular , some of us are going to be mildly popular , some of us are just going to be us Right .

He retired at 46 , you know , that's in there , and so maybe he's just bored , maybe that's why he did it and he did it and he's kind of like I'm kind of you know , I've got the t-shirt , I'm done , you know could be . Uh , he mentioned podcast . Networks do not help small shows get big , they help big shows get bigger . That's from Make Noise .

Oh , I forget the guy . I'm horrible with names lately . I don't know what's going on with my brain , but that's a great book and he talks about it . It's a guy from NPR and I was like that's a great line , because that's really it .

And if you want to be on a network we've talked about that Contact somebody who's on the network , ask them about before and after questions . Most of the time , what I see from networks is you get access to other people on the network .

Like I remember somebody joined well , jordan Harbinger's on Podcast One and so he got access to Adam Carolla and some of the other celebrities that were on that channel . The guys from SmartLless just joined Sirius , so what did they get to do ? They got to interview Howard Stern . That doesn't happen very often .

A lot of times a network , you know , yes , it's a little cross promotion , which is good , and , for the record , you don't need an official network to do that .

Find other shows like yours and just come up with a real basic agreement that every week , you know , okay , this week we're going to , you know , everybody's going to promote Snap , and then next week we're going to promote Crackle , and the week after that we're going to , you know , promote Pop . You know , and then maybe we'll do one for the Lost .

Have you ever heard about the Lost Crispy Brother Roy ? Oh man , it was one of my favorite David Letterman jokes was there was snap , crackle pop and Roy was the lost crispy brother because he developed some sort of drug problem and they had to kick him out . And when it's 12 , 30 at night and you're tired , that is hilarious .

Um , yeah , but Randy said did they get Howard out of his basement ? Actually , I think they went to his house or something . They went to a bar in the Hamptons . So that's where Howard lives when he's in New York . I know he has a house somewhere in Florida and shout out to everyone in Florida .

Hope you're doing okay and you didn't wash away in that whole nine yards Tennessee right as it's making its way up . Yeah , but I just thought it was interesting because ai voice two years ago was I released my first episode in february of this year and then this one .

And so I said One of these is AI and the other is me . And so I played both and she was like , ooh , I don't know , I'm going to guess now it's 50% , you're , you know the chances of her getting it right , or 50 , 50, . He's right , she did get it right and she said for a few reasons .

But she was like , and then I said , what if I told you those were both AI ? And I , just , I waited for a second . You could see the look on her face . Oh my God . I did that same technique to one of our internal guys who has been working with a lot of the LLM , ai stuff , large language models .

I did that same trick where I played it and he said , oh , it's the first one . And I said , what if I told you it was both ? And I just stared at him like very seriously and you could see the panic come over his face . They were guessing , they couldn't tell , and so we're gonna , we're gonna , I'm gonna , I'm gonna . On Monday I have intros going .

Now it's a 40-second intro , but I've got a test going out publicly to see you know , and it's going to go to a couple thousand people and we'll see if anybody says , oh , that was an . You know , stop using AI . I don't think you can tell . It's kind of crazy how good .

There's a few spots where , if you're really listening , I just don't think most people really listen . Yeah , yeah , we're going that stuff's in production and on its way out . It'll be kind of fun to get some feedback on it to see , and it doesn't hurt , it's a pre . We had Simon Sinek on our podcast this week .

11 Labs I think I saw Stephanie say she got in there and it's a little confusing it . They're , they're working on that interface . You can definitely tell that interface was designed by developers . Oh yeah , right , it's a little clunky , it's a little . There's stuff everywhere . It's hard to differentiate the work that you do when you have it do something .

The whole credit system in 11 Labs is weird . You buy credits and then jobs cost certain credits , yeah , and they don't . It's like this value for value Bitcoin thing , where it's like a Satoshi and you're like what does that even mean ? Like what's the ? so they've got this credit system going on .

I bought the $5 plan and then I immediately bought the $10 plan and they gave me a rollover credits . They are changing things on 11 labs weekly so like I went in there , it was text to speech to speech . Now it's text to speech and voice impersonator or something .

And , dave , I would imagine they'll start cleaning up their UI once they figure out all the things they want to do . I'm sure they're getting feedback from people like Guys , I can't find anything , I can't separate anything on here .

I went in to go play some clips and I'm like , okay , these clips are listed , but I have no idea how or when or what they were that Right , so it's going to need a little work .

Hey , jim , this is Dave , and I based this on just a little bit of text . I need to upload more audio to train this . Yeah , so that's not bad . It's not bad . No , it's kind of spooky . We had mentioned networks , or says people think they're on easy street when they get on a network . There are a lot of people that leave after they experience it .

Yeah , I've seen , and that's where and Danny brings us up to networks bring their own issues . Podcasters need to know the terms , exactly what's expected of them , what they'll get in return , and be sure they want to be part of that specific setup .

And the other thing you have to realize who owns the stuff that you create when you're on the network , because there have been people that have , you know , accidentally signed away their show . There was two females that did a show .

They joined a network and apparently they're like I'm on a network , so they turned into divas and they're like yeah , we don't want to work with you anymore . And kicked them off their own show . But they didn't realize that the network owned the show now and it was bad . And it was like , oh yeah , don't do that . A , don't be a diva .

And B , get somebody to read that contract before you sign it , because it could get a little tricky . But yeah , ai is a lot of fun . Oh , speaking of AI , captivate rolled out what's coming out Monday , so two days from today , they added AI to their system and the whole time I'm watching the presentation and I'm like , all right , where's the Captivate thing ?

Because Captivate always they're like Apple . In some cases they were the first people to have the whole guest registration and add it to the episode , kind of thing . But a lot of times they'll take somebody . Somebody else came up with an idea and then they'll make it better . They did .

They were the first to do dynamic show notes , which I thought was a great idea . The thing that killed me I was in a webinar for Libsyn and we had snippets and I displayed snippets and I said , hey , somebody said , oh , those are cool , are those dynamic ?

And so , after the webinar was over , I went to our development team and I go , hey , did you guys hear that suggestion ? That would be amazing if those are dynamic . And they're like , yeah , we're not going to do that . At least at this point they weren't . And literally four weeks later Captivate came out with it .

I was like , see , I told you , but their AI tool is it does you know ? I don't want to say what everybody else does , but it gives you titles , but it gives you multiple titles . It writes you a description , but it gives you multiple descriptions . And I was like , all right , pretty cool , buzzsprout does that with their co-host thing .

But the one that I was like , ah , there's the captivate I know and love is you go in to your podcast settings and you basically say , give me some suggestions for actually you go into episode planning and you say give me some suggestions for actually you go into episode planning and you say , give me some ideas for future episodes .

And what it does is it looks at your stats to see what's working , looks at the episode titles and goes , what about this ? And that in itself is cool , but the one that blew me away was it said you should do a show about podcast advertising , the state of advertising . And then it suggested guests .

One was James Cridlin and I was like , yeah , that's a good one . And then the other one was Heather Osgood , who works in that space . Then it said I should do a show about branding . And it suggested Jared Easley and Jessica Kufferman and I was like that's when I was like whoa , that's pretty cool .

And Jessica Kufferman , and I was like that's when I was like whoa , that's pretty cool . And then I could easily take that idea , which is something else that it's the only one I know that does . This Captivate has a really cool thing where , when I did the Akron Ohio podcast , I would go in and find stories and I could they have a little extension .

You put into Chrome and I'm like , oh , hey , remember this link for an episode and I'd have four or five of those and then I'd go do the episode and all the research links . I could go , yeah , add to this episode instant show notes .

I was like , oh , so cool , this episode idea now , in addition to all the stuff that was already there is now you can have it , suggest episodes and guests . And the guest part was the part that I was like wait , what ? And I was as I'm clicking it right , I'm thinking , okay , who's it going to suggest as a guest ?

Right , this is going to you know , somewhere along the line I'm waiting for the shoe to drop . And no , I was like no , those are really good guests . So it's , you know , ai again pretty cool . Yes , danny here says looking at the trends online too , to give you ideas based on trending topics . See , I didn't even know that . That's cool .

And then you can train it . You go in and you can say you know I am informal or I'm super formal . The one I loved is a matter of I set mine like hard sarcastic , like Dave is sarcastic , write me as sarcastic .

And then I gave it five blog posts that I had done to train itself , cause I can't wait to do the school of podcasting this week , cause the school of podcasting is on Captivate , cause just to see what it's going to do . And then the thing I should point this out , cause I got this somewhat wrong there are because it will do the transcript for you .

Now it's a dollar an hour . So if that's too much for you , then go get a paper route , come on now , a dollar an hour is really cheap for transcripts .

Hey , you transitioned from talking about networks to AI here . This might be a good spot for an ad , so that I thought was cool . And then it's all up to you . I can say , oh yes , add those chapters to my file . It just it's really pretty cool . I was impressed .

And it's only a buck an hour , which means it's going to add I don't know another four bucks to my bill if that . And just realize , if you're like hey , does your tool do AI ?

Ai is not cheap behind the scenes , so I knew they weren't going to be able to keep the same price because some people are going to go crazy with it and that's just phase one Like it can't do what I do in Cast Magic , where I'm like hey , let me ask my now transcript and whatever you want to call this thing , like where are my URLs or what are the

companies that I named in this episode . So it doesn't do that yet . But again , this is just phase one . Yeah , danny says yeah , we only charge for the transcription . All the other AI tools are included . It's a buck an hour for the transcript . So the thing where I did the suggest some episode ideas .

That's part of it is the transcript , and the part that I got wrong was I heard Mark say you can't upload a transcript to have it do all the chocolatey goodness . That's the part I missed . I heard you can't upload a transcript and I thought they took the ability to upload your own transcript away . They did not . That's still there .

But you can't upload a crappy transcript from Bill's house of transcripts and then have it do all the hey recommended chapters and titles and all that . They have to do that . But then again it's a buck . Come on , people . So I'm really looking forward to doing the next episode of the School of Podcasting , so it'll be fun .

And then Steph says see where the chat room's doing its own show . My topic is an artist and a filmmaker . Will it give it topics on that ? I want more solo topics . Yep , that's another one . Again , you could go into ChatGPT , like I was so tempted this morning to go into Chat GPT and ask it what are the top 10 microphones for podcasting ?

Just to see where the blue yeti would come up . Because again it's you know , it's chat GPT or perplexity , I think , is the other one that gives you examples , like it'll quote its sources so you can see who who recommended the blue yeti . So that'll be fun to do with that .

But the thing you have to be careful with is with Google Notebook , and Danny actually has an episode . He created a podcast and I'm just calling them Kyle and Cheryl , these two voices where they're like strap in . We're going to do a deep dive . What's interesting about that ? Is one of Adam Curry's . Did I talk about this last week ? I can't , I've .

What's interesting about that is one of Adam Curry's . Did I talk about this last week ? I can't . I've talked about this so many times , but here's what happened . Stay with me . You've got Adam Curry show no agenda and they're talking about the exploding walkie talkies and how it all happened on the same day and yada , yada , yada , all right .

So somebody runs it through Google notebook and Kyle and Cher are like wait till you hear about this explosive episode Okay , strap in everybody . And they kind of mentioned that there were exploding walkie talkies Not so much that it all happened the same day , but electronic devices are exploding .

So then somebody took the transcript of that show , so we had the original being Adam Curry . Now we've got a transcript of Adam's show and now we're going to take the transcript of the transcript and run it back through Google notebook .

So we've now gone through Google notebook once , took the output of that and run it back through Google notebook and that one Kyle and Cheryl are talking about exploding Walkmans . So apparently that Kyle and Cheryl went back to 1981 because we're like Walkmans and it wasn't . It was so different than the original one .

There's exploding walkie talkies in the Middle East and now there's exploding Walkmans , kind of , and it was just like . So my worry is , if we all just keep regurgitating what somebody just regurgitated Right , we're going to end up with some crap .

There there has to be new inputs coming in , right , imagine if we stopped , you know .

By the way , the number four is the blue yeti on the top 10 the sm7b oh , there you go , that makes sense yeah , it's what happens when we all start saying the same thing all the time together , you know , and in pretty soon you get this group , you get kind of group think and this is there's a little bit of danger in this where if we're just all creating

the same content off the same data set , it will say literally the same things . Randy and I just did a chat , gpt query where I'm sure we said give me the top 10 microphones for podcasters . I'm pretty sure that's probably what Randy put in , that's what I put in . We got a similar list . The Blue Yeti came up for both of us . That's an echo chamber .

Friends . We have to be really cautious of going in there and knowing okay , this is awesome , but is it really according to who and what ? Openai is really bad about sourcing . This is where I wish it's sourced better than it does Bing .

Surprisingly , the co-pilot sorry , the co-pilot Microsoft co-pilot , their version does some sourcing , so you can kind of go back and see hey , these are the places that it gets it from . So I think we've got to get a little bit smarter .

Just as you're using that , just be cautious that we're not repeating , because we will literally just repeat the same things to death , oh yeah , and there'll be no new inputs right , there's a lot of history that you know .

And what I like about this tool and this is free is it's thinking it's doing the answer . It says the Shure SM7B . Samsung Q2U , audio-technica ATR2100 . This isn't a bad list . Number four Blue Yeti . And then , if I wanted , I could view all . But what I love about this is the Shure SM or Shure MV7 . So it's not the SM7B different .

But if I click on this it has links to wherever I got this from . So one's from the podcast host . There's Colin and his team , a bunch of YouTubers . 2buddy says the Blue Yeti . So that's kind of why I like Perplexity , but I still . I did a show about what is a bounce rate for the YourPodCab site show and I then it got me where I wanted to go .

But then I then looked at all those sources to see okay , how credible is this source , you know ? And then Dan says as a history show , I've also found that chat GPT gets history wrong all the time . It just makes stuff up more than actually gives accurate information .

We get in our own little circles of who we talk to , who we listen to , what we think is true , and then we begin to focus in on those things and start we can kind of create our own little , you know , our own little personal bubbles in that , and so that's not necessarily just an AI problem , it can be a human problem as well .

As you edit the transcripts , it's going to learn you a little more so that your transcripts will be .

So you go in and you do some edits especially if you're editing people and you're changing some things around , it immediately starts kicking in and starting fixing things . It's like having 15 people editing a Word document all at the same time and not having any change , edit features turned on and things start changing .

Wait a minute , I just changed this and then it changes it back because it's , you know , a good example is the use of the Oxford comma , or not , right For some folks you use it and other folks there isn't .

If you're an editor and you're going in there and you're changing , you're adding the Oxford comma and its rules are we don't , you'll change it , it'll change it back .

Sometimes , right now , that's an over-exaggerated example , but some of these AI tools and I see this with my editor in Otter all the time they get a little too smart and then they start trying to be helpful and they're actually destructive in the process . So , eyes wide open , friends going in there and knowing what you're getting . It sounds cool , dave .

It sounds cool on the surface , not always cool in actuality , and not the be-all end-all . We still need to think about things .

I'm like , on one hand , it was kind of cool that she was making a personal story , but I was like but you're not real , karen , how did you so ? That made me scratch my head on that . But on the other hand , see , this is where it just goes . I don't know .

I like the fact that it's making it personal stories , because I tell people all the time well , the one thing that AI can't do is create personal stories . But apparently it can't , and so I was like okay . Now the question is are they good personal stories ? I guess we'll find out .

And it's trying to give you a sentence that has a high predictability of making sense . That's what its job is to do . Its job isn't necessarily to be accurate , right ? It has no like accuracy memory of oh , do I check what I say to make sure that's actually the truth . Well , friends , what is truth , I ask you ? How would it know ?

I mean , there are times there are two versions of , and probably more than this , jim .

We say , we call it hallucinating right or whatever . Listen , it's just a calculator . You just gave it some things and it's trying to make sentences that make sense . It's not aware it's , yes , it's getting smarter , or maybe it's getting a little bit better or more accurate , but , friends , it's not thinking , don't , let's just know this , it's just a calculator .

It's getting a little bit better or more accurate , but , friends , it's not thinking , don't , let's just know this , it's just a calculator , it's just a word calculator .

He says use AI as additional intelligent that complements you as a creator , as opposed to artificial intelligence that replaces your uniqueness , a way to reframe thinking around the tools . Yeah , I'm always like . I'm like hey , let me make the content and then let me use AI to maybe polish it . I know Craig from AI Goes to College , talks a lot about that .

Hey , it can be really used to like hey , write this for more clarity . Or , you know , grade this in a way and let me know what's missing . That's you know . Again , use it as an assistant , don't use it as the generator to . You know , make up .

And I always say you know , if you want to be a thought leader with your podcast , and the way you're going to be a thought leader is by reading a script written by chat GPT . That that's a big like . No , because it will ask chat GPT , when was its latest update ?

And it'll be like depending on what I , it said , 2021 for history and 2023 for latest stuff , and I'm like so that's not thought leading . If you're referring to things from , you know , 2022 . Depending on your space , of course . If you're talking , technology no , if you're talking I don't know something else that doesn't change quite so fast .

That'll be the tricky part , so it'll be fun to .

They weren't saying it's funny , grammarly never called it AI . That was their thing , right , good , good on them for creating their own brand , right . But the early versions of Grammarly were all based on this , and so it's a really good editor . And from a summarization tool , dave , I mean , it's amazing what it can do .

Take the amount of data that already exists in a set and and bring that down to something smaller that actually makes sense . Really good at that . But creating things necessarily on the fly , that's still . It's what we're , maybe still a waste .

And , to be honest , imagine a human with all the knowledge of the internet trying to make sense of questions asked by individuals who want their biases confirmed . That's impossible .

We're never going to get to that point where , because we listen , we all have our own internal biases , things that we believe to be true , whatever , there's dozens of versions of things out there , and it's just not going to happen , friends . It's just not going to be . We're not going to get to that point . It's just not possible to happen , friends .

It's just not going to be . We're not going to get to that point , it's just not possible . So I think , use the tool for what it's good for , for sure .

They don't know how much I work and rework and re-rework stuff that AI gives me . Yeah , everybody thinks AI just oh , you just throw it in the thing and it spits out a thing and you're done . You're like maybe not Got to be careful with that . Keep that in mind . Here's a fun question Does anyone produce two podcasts in one feed ?

And I can do from my days of working at Libsyn , that is such a bad idea . What it is , I get it . So let's say you're on the Libsyn $15 a month plan . You start a second show . You're like , hey , can I ? You know how does this work ? Do I have to pay another 15 bucks ? And the answer is yes , you do . And if you're on Captivate , no , you don't .

But if you're on Libsyn , you would , or Buzzsprout or Blueberry or whoever . It's a different business model .

And so their answer is well , I'll just put it all in the same feed and about a month later , when they've had a lot of their audience , go , hey , is there any way I can get just show number A and not show number B , because we don't want show number B ? And they come to their media host and go how do we split these ? And it's just a mess .

It's a giant mess and you have to get people to resubscribe to ShowBee . Now when I saw that in Reddit , I was like , yeah , danny says one show , one feed , don't invite problems that don't need to exist . Yeah , it's going to . It creates a mess . I just remember every time I saw that ticket at Libsyn I was like , oh , who advised you on that ?

And my guess would be somebody in Facebook . Yeah , so that's always kind of tricky . Ralph says yeah , in terms of AI , the answer is to use the tool , but don't be a tool Exactly . So keep that in mind . Another one we got here and we throw this on the screen . If you're watching this , somebody was angry at Spreaker . Anyone else here use Spreaker .

They rolled out more changes for podcasters over the weekend with no notice . As usual , they turned on auto-optimization , even if you had it turned off , and are adding ad breaks of two ads each as often as every five minutes . That sounds yummy . The algorithm is out of control .

I understand that it's their right to try and bump up monetization , but it's excessive . I understand that it's their right to try and bump up monetization , but it's excessive , disruptive and a lack of transparency . And the lack of transparency from them is never ending and my guess is they're on the free plan or something .

But just to me , the one thing Spreaker is interesting because they're owned by iHeart , if I remember now , and if you have a Spreaker account . I love Spreaker because they barely and I mean they give you this much like a very tiny amount of what's supposed to be your website . They don't give you one .

So if you're a person like you know , libsyn Captivate Buzzsprout they give you a very basic website . Libsyn Captivate Buzzsprout , they give you a very basic website . I said the guy who works for Podpage , spreaker you almost don't get a website .

So it's weird because in the early days , like 2010-ish , like it was Libsyn Blueberry , spreaker , you know , and Spreaker was keeping up and I remember when they came to I think it was , I know they asked me . I don't know if they asked you Jim , hey , what do you need us to do ?

And they kind of came around and you know , jason says hadn't noticed , he's on Spreaker , so he says I'm . He says and I'm on a paid plan , so maybe you know , that was only for the free people Cause , look , it's one of those things , when it's free , it's not free .

They're either A selling your information , which they probably are and then , b , they've got to make that money back . And so they're going to get that money back by putting ads on your show . And so when they added more , it's because the price of ads have gone down . How do you keep that same amount of income ? You add more ads to your show .

So if they're on a free plan , don't do that . And if you're on a paid plan , you know that's a toughie because they will put ads in your stuff . But that's again when we say ads , that's the you know two to five dollar range per 1000 downloads . So enjoy your point . Zero , zero , two cents .

You know Randy says I heart , who claims are number one in podcasting but only account for one percent of the downloads in podcasting apps . Yeah , that's every time . You know , I see that their thing . You know iheart number one in podcasting .

And then they have to go in four apps that have podcasts and radio and this and that and it's hey , we're the number one show on podcasting on saturday mornings with guys named dave and jim you know for sure we used to use their page , their landing page .

You can pick and choose what you want there or not , and it was a really nice as we were trying to introduce our customers to Gallup , to podcasting . It was a really nice landing page to to . It was easy to update , it was custom , it was customizable .

I could get you know folks to say , hey , regardless of your player land here , you can either listen there or choose the player and listen there . But they took it away and I much like what was said in the chat . There wasn't an announcement hey , we're taking this just away One day it just wasn't there .

So I contacted their support and said , hey , where'd it go ? That was super helpful to us . No-transcript if you're help brokering the ad , you know the ads going out . You have scale at that point and then you can kind of dictate the percentage that the podcaster makes and the percentage you make as a host provider . That's to your advantage .

And if they're on your player , you get better stats . Right , this is a stats play , is what it is . They just want to . They want to get better stats for stuff . So they took all those players off . I'm sure some , some analysts said hey , you know , we have a lot of clicks going off of our website .

If we kept them on our website , which is what we recommend people do , what do we say all the time ? Make sure they're landing on your website , not Apple , not Spotify , right , you want them to come to your website because you control that experience .

I'm sure they said they thought the same thing Just wasn't very helpful to me and I was like oh , now we have . I have 14 shows over there . I can't . It's leaving Spreaker would be . I shouldn't say this out loud . Hopefully nobody from Spreaker is listening . Leaving them would be difficult , you know it's just . Why do you do ? I'd go to Podpage .

If I was going to do it all over again , I'd go to Podpage .

Right , I've invested in a good microphone and have a lot in place . My therapist is encouraging me to record and share something soon , but I'm unsure whether to post it right away . I feel like I'm almost there , but could use some advice on the next best steps . Wait on the best next steps . Do people usually post their first draft right away ?

Please don't , please , don't post your first rough draft . That's , I'm jumping in here , but anyway , do people usually post their first drafts right away or wait until they're polished everything up ? I'm worried that a fear might be holding me back , but I also want to make sure everything is good as it can be before sharing it .

I'd really appreciate any guidance or advice from those who've been through this before this . You know , as always , it's a podcast question , so the answer is it depends . Yeah , so it depends on your why . Now you mentioned your therapist here .

So if this is an audio diary and you just want to feel heard , you could put out a rough draft , because we're not in it for advertising , we're not in it , we're not selling anything .

You know , I always recommend don't put out a rough draft , because if you would kind of polish that up a little bit , you'd have a little more impact on the you know , on the audience . But that's , you know , I get stage fright .

It's always kind of fun because first people are trying to convince me nobody's going to listen to my podcast and I'm like no , if you'd like , here's some guidelines , some best practices , let's try to do that . And they're like oh , nobody's going to listen . And then episode eight comes out and they're like I'm almost to 100 downloads .

And then they start freaking out because people are listening , and it's always weird . They get scared because nobody's going to listen . And then they get scared because , oh my gosh , people are listening , and so it's always kind of tricky . So what would you say to this person , jim ?

I wish I could listen to my own advice on all the podcasts that I've done and hold off for the first five and then and then start the podcast . Right , get five attempts in before you start really doing it .

But if listen , if it's good for you to get it out there and if it's good for you to have some folks listen to it , if you need that , just do it . Yeah , you can always get . You know you can . You're going to get feedback and it may or may not be healthy for you based on where you're at Listen .

Last Thursday I did a solo show I don't do a lot of solo shows on Home Gadget Geeks , but I did a solo show and I got done and you know , hit , stop , record and that night I was thinking about some of the things that I said and I was like I don't think I'm going to put this show out Like it was live . It was fine . It's out there now .

I published it this morning but it's six , episode 624 . And I got done with that one and thought , yeah , I don't know if that was my best work , I don't know . I just didn't feel as comfortable with it as I wanted to when I was done . We all have those . We all have those feelings .

And people are like that was the best thing ever and you're like , really , stephanie wants to know why do people hate listen notes ? Here's the thing . I've got two videos on my YouTube channel about this . Number one if I'm a podcast consultant and I say I'm in , like right now , the school of podcasting , top 0.5% Like you can't get much .

You know 0.4 , I guess . But anyway , if I say I'm a top 0.5% podcaster , okay , sounds impressive . And there are people that use that in their marketing because you don't know what that means . I think it's crap because I know what it means and what they're saying is if you go to their site and dig into it , I am beating .

You know that one show about the biggest loser from like 2008, . Right , I'm better than them . Okay , I hope so . Steve Stewart from stevestewartme . He was in the top 7% and hadn't put an episode out in seven years , so it's comparing you to shows , or the 8 billion shows on Anchor that are , I don't know . Is this working ?

Okay , well , congratulations , you're beating that show too . So when people go , I'm in the top 5% of listen notes . I don't know . Is this working ? Okay , well , congratulations , you're beating that show too . So when people go , I'm in the top 5% of listen notes . I'm like , congratulations , you beat a turd . You know what I mean .

So now , that doesn't mean that all the shows are bad , but a lot of them are , trust me . A lot of podcasts are so bad .

So when I see people using that as a badge of this is how much I know either A , you're preying on the uninformed , which I think is bad , or B you know it's bad , like either A , you're uninformed and you're just like holy cow , I'm in the top 0.5% . This is great , so I get that .

So either you're uninformed , but I'm the people that I go and there are many podcast consultants that know that stat is , you know , congratulations , you're beating that podcast about . You know , insert old TV show here . You're beating that facts of life show Great job , you know , you're beating that chip show , television show .

That's the part that I go and I lose , and this is just a Dave thing , it's just my opinion . I lose a little bit of respect for the podcast consultant that's quoting that in their marketing material , and but I did change my view on one thing . If somebody goes , where can I find the most popular show on my topic ?

Where can I find the most popular show on my topic , which , to me , you are ? I think you're missing . Can you hear the fun-filled , high-pitched wine right now ? Yeah , that's great , isn't it ? It's not too bad and we're done . I think you're missing it .

Yes , obviously you want to get on a show that has many downloads or et cetera , but to me the bonus of interviews are the networks , the connection you get with the host . Don't make the last time you talk to that host , the last time you were on their show , start a relationship with that person .

But if somebody said , where can I find a most popular show , this would be a resource . It's not the resource and even as skewed and weird as their algorithm is , had an episode in the last seven years . So that's , it's just in . I just marketing people some . I'll give you an example . There are great salespeople and then there are the guy .

This is when I was a youngin , I was 20-something , I had a very short sales career and I was . I had sold a copier to a church and I came back and it was my first sale and the guys oh , you didn't , I forget what I forgot . I forgot to quote the stand or something like that .

And then , in a long story short , this salesman told me to lie to the church and I'm like , take out of , it could have been an auto store . Lying to your customer is just not something I do and I was just like , ew , is this what sales is about ? Lying to people ? I'm like ugh , so that was . And I said I can't lie to the church .

And he's like , well , then you're going to lose the sale . And I'm like I'll go back and explain to them that you know . And I said , hey , I forgot this thing . I know I quoted you this price . It's actually going to be more . And they're like , oh , okay .

And then I got the sale and they gave it to somebody else because I was in the wrong territory or something like that . And that's when I went , okay , we're done , we're done with sales . That didn't . I walked in once and handed somebody a brochure and they spit on it and handed it back and I went , yeah , okay , I think we're done .

Had a dog almost pee on my shoe . I it was a very short sales career that you know , fun-filled and exciting . I don't know , jim , do you ever hear anybody talk about listen notes in your bubble ?

I mean , the numbers are right , the it's just how you use them right . And you know , I'd be afraid if I was producing a podcast and it wasn't in the top 10% , then you'd be like , oh , those are some really low numbers . If that's , you know , if that's kind of based on the global , the global numbers yeah , there's just such a big number of global .

This is the problem . This is Listen Notes' problem . There's such a big number of podcasts that are out there . Getting anything to make any sense is going to be tough . You're in start doing , yeah , uh , ask the podcast coach what you have here home gadget geeks . Exactly the same number .

Listen score is a metric that shows the estimated popularity of the podcast compared to other RS-based public podcasts in the world , on a scale from zero to 100 . Again , you're beating a turd . Congratulations . The higher , the more popular , calculated from the first and third party data updated monthly . So now people can come back every month .

Jack , did my number go up or down ? You know the podcast is one of the top 2.5% most popular shows out of 3,421,384 which , again , if we go to podcast index and look at indexorg and go to stats , you know , yeah , there are 4 million podcasts and you are beating them , congratulations .

But really there's only four and that's to me 434 that have put out an episode in 90 days . If you're putting out a show every three months , are you really ? You know , look , do what you can with the schedule you got , but I'm looking at 30 days , maybe 60 .

But you know , even a podcast published in the last three days is 96,000 , 230,000 for 10 days , 326 for 30 days , and that's the number I look at 230,000 for 10 days , 326 for 30 days , and that's the number I look at . If you publish once a month . Okay , not the best schedule , but 323,000 is way different than 4,274,000 .

So I'm just like yeah , so the list .

And I give you three really valid and I could probably have ChatGPT give me three really valid reasons why you're wrong about that 30 versus 60 . Then you and I have a , you know , microsoft versus Apple conversation , a battle over you know , like why we think we're right on this .

And all of a sudden the numbers get then they're really meaningless because it's you got to explain to somebody okay , this is based on a 30-day rolling average of the thing , and people's eyes just glaze over . Like ListenNotes has decided to just say you know what ? We're going to give it the global number and we're just going to call it that .

And listen , listennotes is really there to sell ads and cross-reference to other services which I'm sure they have affiliate relationships with . So their goal is just to drive traffic to their site so they can make money on ads and affiliate relationships there's . But that's hard . That is when you talk about those stats in that way .

To get a number that's meaningful , you're going to have to make a judgment call , and your judgment call and my judgment call on what is meaningful may be completely different . What would be nice is a configurable on that site . What would be nice is a configurable hey , where do I rank based on the 30-day number ? Where do I rank based on a 60-day number ?

That that may actually be more helpful . So you could kind of , if you were going to go in there and see you know cause . All of a sudden your end gets a little bit smaller and you drop a little bit more . You know most people would , so maybe that'd be good . I don't know . Maybe Is that possible today . Can you in in listen notes ?

I just went to the website and Seattle eats with Tanvin is one of the top visual art podcasts . So yeah , when I hear a podcast and look , you know you market how you want to market Just to me , you're never going to hear me say you'll hear me say I'm the longest running podcast about podcasting .

That's true and I can verify that Me and Rob Walsh might have to do a little thumb wrestle because he had podcast 411 . And I go , was that a podcast about podcasting ? I'm like that was you know . But and when I go longest running then I beat Rob because that show faded a while back .

Yeah , I , you know I lose a little bit of respect , but that's just me , that's my background , that's me . You know you market the way you want to market and you know it is what it is . Anthony has a question . Thank you for waiting , anthony . I'm like , oh , I got to get to his question here .

Can anyone recommend a wired mic that will connect to a cell phone for our roving reporters on the playground ? There are a couple . Does it have to be wired ? Because , trust me , you're going to trip over that wire if you're roving around . I would recommend it's not here . There is the Rode wireless one that records right to the microphone .

You don't even have to have your phone . That's what's great about it . The bad news is you can't hear it . There's no plug my headphones in . So if you're popping plosives on that thing , you don't know until you get home . There is something to wise that little cabled microphones . The fun part is plugging it into the phone .

So you're going to probably have to have some sort of you know cause . Here's , trust me this when I say the wires like this gave . I think this is eight feet of wire and a every time you use it you got to detangle it . I really it's pricey , but man , I got to hear one and play with one . The shore little wireless microphone . It's $330 .

So that's a little pricey , but they're literally the microphones the size of your pinky , the end of your pinky finger . You just clip it on . So it's not like you're , you know somebody always love these . Look , I like my Rode microphones .

They sound great , but I also don't like it when it looks like I've pinned a pager from 1988 on my shirt to do the interview .

But they're really cool and they have noise canceling , which is , especially if you're on a playground could come in handy , because I saw on the Shure website that they're standing next to some sort of ocean-type thing and there's wind and so you have waves crashing and this and that , and then all of a sudden they just go here .

There's a button where you're like , with noise reduction , without noise reduction , and it's a big difference that in terms of and that wirelessly connects to your phone and from there you can export to Dropbox or someplace to get it on your computer or whatever . But you know it's tricky .

Also , I will let you know , I did a podcast for a local event called Rockin' on the River and these people were hammered straight up , hammered , and I put a microphone in front of people and asked them like . They'd be like yeah , rock and roll , baby . And I'd be like hey , you having a good time at Rockin' on the River .

And I put a mic in front of them and they'd be like I don't know , like people do not like talking in public and I mean I luck out when I go to events that I'm talking to a bunch of podcasters . So with that and this goes for everybody never let them grab the microphone , never let somebody if you're doing a Bob Barker kind of thing .

But you got to be careful . Yeah , the MoveMic . Thank you , gary , I couldn't remember the name of that . The MoveMic is my choice . The lavs pair directly to the iPhone . You can also add a receiver later if you want to . The receiver lets you throw it into your camera if you wanted to , things like that . But that is one I'm really close .

The only reason I bought the I bought the Rode Wireless Go and of course , six months later they came out with the Wireless Bro because it connected to the Rodecaster , which in a way is kind of stupid , because I thought at the time I would have the , I would get a lav mic , plug it into the Wireless Go , which again , I'm buying a wireless system so I can

plug a wired microphone into it . But I'm seriously thinking of selling my Wireless Go microphones and getting the Shure one , for I like the Rode wireless microphone thing . It really bugs me that I can't hear what I'm recording .

And the other fun thing is that I need to realize I shouldn't really buy anything to record at events because it's come to my attention . I don't record at events , I'm usually just talking to people and when you pull out a microphone it makes people get a little weird , even if they're podcasters .

But Powered to Wise is the wired lab I used and they were cheap they're like 50 bucks that if you need that and they come in a pair of two . So it's like a Y .

You plug it into the mic and then you have yours clipped on and your wire's hanging everywhere and you just walk up to somebody and you clip a mic on them and let them go and then just make sure at the end of that to say it's okay if I use this in my podcast , right , because you want to have some sort of sign off that they're happy listening to that

and but it sounds like fun good don't .

That's what I always liked , that because I wanted to to hear like you're saying . I want to make sure we weren't blowing it out . The Tascam mics are a little sensitive . They're almost like spy microphones .

You can turn that thing on and turn it up and you can hear somebody across the room a little bit louder than they actually are , because some of those microphones are a little sensitive . But Tascam would be a way to go . Zoom H1 would be another way .

It's got one of the mini discs here and the thing I hate about it is turning it on .

You have all these buttons up here right , but the button to make it record you have to slide to the left , and when you can't see the backdrop or the backlit little , ridiculously small screen , I finally went back to the car , made sure it was recording and just left it , because I could record like 10 hours of audio on the disc . So it was kind of handy .

And then I just had the Rode interview mic so I could kind of do this , and it's basically what that wireless system does now . But this one has a headphone out so I could hear what was going on , and now I have to find a wired pair of headphones .

If I want to use that configuration , I really do need to sell half the gear that's sitting here behind me . I never use half this stuff . Dan brought it up . Monday is International Podcast Day . Oh yeah , which is fun . We used to be . Not that it's not a big deal deal , but we used to make a much more bigger deal about it than those .

I mean , this gets filed under the no good deed goes unpunished type thing , where people I did it with me and then last minute you get somebody to sign up . Hey , you have this hour slot . Oh , now I got to go wash my hair and so you can't win for losing . On those they just that's a hard , that's just a yeah .

Randy says that 20 28 hour live stream was tough on the organizers . Oh yeah , you would think podcasters are some of the . Yeah , they're hard to work with .

You guys are hard to work with sometimes I'm just saying yeah , you're hard to work with yeah , steve lee and dave , I think was uh steven yeah david , david steve and they would see a ridiculous hours and they're getting people in .

Oh , it's like an internet radio thing , right , you know they like back then people were like I've never heard that word before . What are you talking about ?

So we put out some graphics on the day and of course it was to promote our podcasts , right , but it was good to celebrate it . You know it is a thing , but you're right .

Just realize , if you become an awesome supporter , not only do you A not feed Google as much , b , you get access to bonus content . C , you get the show what you call it advertising free , and you know there's bonus content there . But by any means , I will take your $10 . I really do appreciate that .

Dr , you can be an awesome supporter by going over to askthepodcastcoachcom slash awesome , and the show is brought to you by the School of Podcasting . So , whether you're planning launching , you need help growing your podcast . It's all there . Use the coupon code COACH when you sign up and save , and that comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee .

And the show runs on PodPage . If you want to check out PodPage , go over to TryPodPagecom . New videos coming soon on PodPage because we changed the dashboard and we're finally rolling those out . Check it out tripodpagecom . And we're using Ecamm live right now If you want to check it out , go over to askthepodcastcoachcom .

Slash Ecamm and that's two , ms , because hmm , is it good ? And I'm going to creator camp in two weeks . I'll have to figure out , I think . No , we probably won't have a show . I want to say October 12th , whatever the second week of October is Cause I'll still be in Boston . Boston , will you pack your car If you need more ? Jim Cullison and who doesn't ?

Then go over to the average guyTV and or you can go to home gadget geeks , check out his show . And it's time for the awesome supporter of the week . So we go to the wheel O'Names and we're trying to figure out who is it going to be . Is it the ladies over at Keeping the Flame Alive ? Or Randy over at Bible Bites ? Or John Muntz ?

Well , we're going to first just to make sure we're going to hit shuffle , and then we're going to hit shuffle and then we're going to hit spin . I'm interested . I should if I had extra time I'd make sure see if I could figure it out . I can't believe it . That's why I hit shuffle . It is again our good friend Chris Stone over at castaheadnet .

If you need , especially if you're into video and live streaming and things like that . Chris can help you out over at castaheadnet . What's interesting , that's his third week in a row . That's it . I'm like that's why I hit shuffle , I'm like I just not that I don't want to say , chris again , I just , you know there are other people .

There's Ed , there's Ralph , again from askralphcom . There's Jody from you know , to askthepodcastcoachcom , slash awesome . And this is where we always I'm hitting the button and for whatever reason , it's really odd that behind the scenes , e-cam , there we go , it just won't come up . It doesn't pop up when I hit my button on my screen .

But anyway , if you have found this show that it's saving you time , saving you money , have we saved you a headache ? Have we kept you educated ? Have we entertained you and made your Saturday morning bright and shiny ? Well then you can go over to askthepodcastcoachcom slash awesome and become an awesome supporter today .

So thanks to everyone who helps out with that . We do appreciate that .

I'm like I'm sure there's 6 o'clock showing , because I'm trying to beat the crowd and I was the only person in the theater . I was like movies are going to go away . I love big movies . I don't go enough . It is kind of odd that the ticket's $13 and the popcorn's $15 . Oh yeah , give me a break . Brutal .

I went to a pizza place and spent 75 . So it's be careful friend , it's getting expensive out there yeah .

Yeah , that makes sense that makes sense I'm just not streaming my spotify and everything else . I saw it and I was , you know , not really my cup of tea . And there we go . Dan , of course , would know the movie guy denzel washington and pedro pascal in gladiator 2 .

Yeah , because there were so many unanswered questions from gladiator one , you know , I was like , oh well yeah .

Like it's not quite Rambo , where he's running a half a mile and apparently everybody who was trying to kill him is trying to shoot him in the ankle and missing . That always drove me nuts with Rambo movies .

But there's a part of me that's go wait a minute , you're not gonna just yeah and stop that crowbar with your forearm .

In fact , they have a web-based interface and I love the fact that I can pull up Pocket Casts on the web and see where my bookmarked .

Well , not .

Also , if you haven't gone to schoolofpodcastingcom slash question , I'm dying to know your thoughts on chapters . Do you use them in your show ? Do you use them as a listener ? Are you in the what do you mean chapters book ? Whatever ? Go over to askthepodcastcoachcom slash question . This is the last day I'm taking Technically .

Yesterday was and I haven't looked in the folder , but I haven't . Usually I have people like , hey , I answered your question and I haven't got a lot of those , and I'm dying to know because I play a lot with chapters At any rate . Yeah , so school at podcastingcom slash question .

And don't forget to tell me a little bit about your show where we can find it . So it's also free self promotion . Jim , do you use chapters ?

So , thanks to Mark over at podcastbrandingco , dan over at basedonatruestorypodcastcom , thanks to R for the super chat Finder at Mouthy Broad Media and thanks to the chat room . You guys are always fun to hang out with and great questions , and Jim is left to go to a rave .

So that's great fun and it's one of those things where , when I go out to Reddit and I see the same old questions , it's interesting to see what you guys are going to bring up , and I knew we were going to talk about AI and Captivate and other things like that .

Sorry , you could see the weirdness on my face all All right , guys .